Simon Otto began his animation career at the right place, studying the craft at the renowned Les Gobelins in Paris. He lives on the US West Coast and is a native of Switzerland.

Otto previously worked as a supervising animator on the title character Sinbad in ‘Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas’ as well as supervising the animation on two of the members of Sinbad’s crew, the Chinese brothers Jin and Li.

In addition, he worked as an animator on the character Spirit in ‘Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron’, and he also supervised the animation of the eagle in the film. Otto began his career at DreamWorks in 1997, as an animator on “The Prince of Egypt” and later animated on “The Road to El Dorado.” Clearly some very nice work in those two features.

Prior to joining DreamWorks, Otto received animation training during an internship with Walt Disney Feature Animation in Paris, France. CGSociety is very happy to have Dreamworks' cooperation for this very timely 'Meet the Artist presentation.

The "Meet the Artists" forum provides a conducive environment where CGTalk members can have the opportunity to speak to some of the finest digital art talents in the world! CGTalk members can post questions and artwork, and have them answered or critiqued by these master artists. This is a fantastic opportunity to gain valuable insight from seasoned industry veterans!

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Hi!
As a rencently french graduated student I was wondering how you got hired by Dreamworks?
What kind of significant differences did you notice between the american way of working and the french one?
I read about the "translation" of stop motion into cg animation, how was it?
Thanks for your answers and your time!!
pascal

Hey! Im not sure how much you know about US animation schools..but if you can say, what sets Les Gobelins apart from US colleges teaching animation? What makes it so "renowned"? btw Flushed Away looks awesome!

First of all, thanks for giving us this opportunity to ask questions! I appreciate it a lot.

As a lead animator, do you delegate who animates what? Or rather, what does being a "lead animator" consist of? What are your responsibilities?

How were the animations shots distributed among the animators? Were they distributed by scene (i.e. John animates scene A, Jim animates scene B), distributed by character (i.e. John animates Harvy, Jim animates Kelly) or what?

As a lead animator, how involved do you like to get? If you are delegating a lot of work to others, are you keeping a close eye on the development or are you letting them impart a lot their own creative decisions? Also, along the same lines, do you also like to work closely with modelling artists, lighting artists, etc?

Your work truly inspires me...congrats on your position as Lead Animator!

Just two simple questions about workflow....if they've already been asked, feel free to pass over them

1) Over the course of a feature...approximately how much animation does each animator "own" in the film at the end of the whole process (ie....30 seconds? 5 minutes? more? less?). I realize that the animation is probably distributed pretty unevenly between animators...but a rough estimate would be great!

2) Approximately how much animation is each animator expected to have finalized each week? I heard an estimate of 8 seconds/week at some of the larger studios a while ago...but I'm wondering if that's been stepped up due to the fact that more and more CG films are being pumped out faster and faster lately.

Anyways...take care! Thanks for dedicating your time to this Q&A session

Simon! Hey, it's me. Chris Capel. you know, the animator that just up and disappeared about a month ago. Just wanted to say it was awesome being under your supervision and i look forward to seeing you guys again soon! can't wait to see the finished film on the big screen tomorrow! congrats on your amazing work. talk to you later!

Hello Simon, first congrats for your path of carreer from now and your great animation work in the movie quoted above, i'm very pleased to be able to read your opinons here !

I'm french student in 2d/3d animation and will finish my graduation next year with a short movie, my question is large and about the CG here in France... how do you see the evolution and developpment of this field here for the future? You should know that the few CG movies that has been released here didn't worked pretty well (let's say Renaissance, Keana for the recent ones), the US animated features are a lot much popular, attractive, so how do you see the future of french CG movie, why do you think it doesn't work pretty well actually? Because we got the talents but we are missing something... I'll be very interested to hear your pov

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